


Take Me Back To The Bay

by scribefindegil



Series: Gravity Cove [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Univere--Selkies, Crying About Craft Supplies, Gen, Post-Series, Selkies, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 14:06:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer's over, and Dipper's having a hard time adjusting to life after Gravity Cove. Mabel hatches a plot to help him out.</p>
<p>Selkie AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me Back To The Bay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neelh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/gifts).



> Written for a "crying about craft supplies" prompt on Tumblr. Request: "all of those bottles and jars. what are they useful for. why do they exist. why do i love them"
> 
> Set after the summer that begins in "I Am A Man Upon The Land." The intervening story is still to come!

“Dipperrrrr!” Mabel groaned, banging on the door. “I know you’re just hanging out in the bathtub being a seal! I need to take a shower!”

There was a suspiciously long pause before the latch on the door clicked and Mabel was greeted by the sight of her twin brother with a towel wrapped around the lower half of his body and their shared sealskin around the upper half.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I lost track of time.”

Mabel shrugged. “Eh. I can’t complain too much. At least you’re less stinky now you hang out in the tub all the time! Next we gotta work on your clothes.”

Dipper grunted. “Waste of time, I’m telling you.”

As he walked past her, Mabel gasped theatrically. “Wait! It’s all a plot! If you don’t have clothes to wear, you get more seal time!”

Dipper rolled his eyes. “Mabel . . .”

“A dastardly ploy! You fiend, plotting against your own sister!”

“Mabel!”

She froze. That wasn’t Dipper’s friendly sibling bickering voice, or his pretending-to-be-annoyed-because-it-was-funny voice. He was actually upset.

“I’m just not in the mood, okay? Sorry I’m taking away your seal time.”

He passed the skin to her without looking and stalked off to their room, arms crossed protectively over his chest.

***

“Diiiiipper . . .”

“I’m asleep.”

“Asleep people don’t talk.”

“Yeah they do. It’s a thing.”

Mabel huffed. She knew people were supposed to get grumpier when they turned into teenagers. Maybe that was part of it. But the other part was something she understood completely.

“Hey,” she said, sitting down on Dipper’s bed and draping the sealskin over him. Well, she draped it over the lump in the blankets that she assumed was her brother. After a few seconds, a skinny hand emerged and grabbed the skin, pulling it inside the blanket nest.

Mabel patted the blankets vaguely. “I miss it too.”

The blankets shifted, and part of Dipper’s face emerged. “I thought leaving all the adventures and mysteries behind would be the hardest part! But I’m coping with that! It’s the ocean!”

Mabel flopped backwards so she was lying next to him. “I know. It’s so weird and quiet at night, isn’t it?”

The blankets nodded.

“Hmmm.”

“You’re thinking a thing.”

“I’m thinking about SOLUTIONS!”

Dipper groaned and rolled over until he was once again completely hidden.

Mabel lay there for a while, her eyes narrowed. Eventually, she rolled off the bed onto the floor, excavated her phone, and sent out several very important texts.

***

The first box came in just a few days. Mabel whistled gently as she looked at the label. Grunkle Stan had sprung for express shipping. He must have believed her when she said this was an emergency. Then again, if anyone was going to understand the urgency of the situation it would be him.

She grinned at the scrawled note: “This is bona-fide actual glass from the sea, not that junk I sell to tourists!” The box was so heavy that she struggled to carry it up the stairs to their room, but she had to work quickly. There was only one more episode of _Ghost Harassers_ on, and she wanted to finish before Dipper came upstairs.

She’d barely gotten started, however, before there was a knock on the door and her father leaned in.

“Mabel, can you set the table for . . . what are you doing?”

“I’m turning our room into a beach!” Mabel responded, gesturing around at the pile of shells, pebbles, and sea glass she was beginning to spread across the floor. _Obviously_. “Dipper was sad because he missed the ocean, and I miss it too, so I got everyone in Gravity Cove to send me beach stuff so we can pretend!”

She got the usual frozen “I don’t understand your artistic vision” expression in response. Then Dad blinked and said, “Look, sweetie, I’m glad that you want to help your brother, but you can’t just leave piles of rocks on the floor. Keep them in the box, okay?”

“But Dad!” Mabel protested.

“No buts! Maybe you could put them outside, but they’re not staying where they are.”

“But we’re not allowed to be seals outside!” Mabel protested.

“Yes, and that’s for a good reason. We want to keep you safe. That means no seal time outside the house and no piles of sharp rocks on your bedroom floor. Got it?”

Mabel sighed. “I got it.”

She managed to shovel everything back into the box and hide it under the yarn in her Craft Corner before she got called down for dinner.

***

Mabel pushed the latest package deep into her pile of craft supplies. She wasn’t going to be able to hide many more boxes. She’d have to tell Dipper, but also tell him that they couldn’t do anything with them, and then he’d be even more sad and she’d have made things worse. She set her jaw. Nope. That was unacceptable. She was going to find a way to make things work!

She burrowed into her yarn stash. Maybe she could still make a little beach. Fill up one of the plastic bins just enough that a seal could fit in it.

The biggest bag of yarn overbalanced and rained skeins down onto her head. She squeaked, ducking under the onslaught. When she looked up, her eyes fell on another bin. It was usually hidden at the back—she kept buying the things, so it was full, but she never knew what to use them for.

She smiled. Obviously they were destiny impulse craft purchases! Now she knew exactly what to do.

***

Dipper trudged up the stairs. Mabel had skipped out on that day’s conspiracy club meeting, which meant there were fewer snacks and a lot more arguing than usual.

He opened the door to their room and his mouth fell open with it.

Nearly every flat surface was covered in ornamental bottles and jars filled with shells and rocks and driftwood and seaglass. There were round jars hanging from the windows, the sunlight catching the multicolored glass inside and casting beams of blue-green light across the room. There were tiny jars, just big enough to hold a pinch of sand and the smallest shells, dotting the empty spaces on their bookcases and trinket shelves and hanging from strings across all of Mabel’s photo boards. There were heavy, wide-mouthed jars and clear bottles with decorative corks set across the floor. Some of them looked like they’d been half-filled with water, so that the rocks and shells glistened.

In the middle of it all, a pile of mussel shells in her hands and the sealskin around her shoulders, was Mabel. She looked up and grinned at him.

“I know it’s not the same,” she said. “And I know we’re going back. But I thought, until we do . . . it wouldn’t hurt to have some reminders.”

The laptop behind her was playing a recording of the ocean. He could hear the gentle crash of waves and the cries of the gulls. It wasn’t real, he knew. But Mabel was. And their family was, and their friends.

Dipper rushed forwards to hug his sister, scattering seashells across the floor.


End file.
